We’re on countdown

We’ve had David for 2.5 days this week and he has finished pretty much everything he can do on the list – the remaining items need someone else to do something first.  However, he broke the news that he’s going to America for a couple of weeks at the beginning of December, which means in all likelihood if I don’t nab him for those jobs before he goes, I’m not likely to get him back until January.

Since there’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind, Mick and I have agreed to put our collective feet to the floor and try and get the house completely finished by the end of November.  We’ve pushed on pretty well, with David’s help, and bits of it are now starting to look like a home rather than a project.

Painting the woodwork in the twin room while Ophelia lashes the windows.  The slate roof barely made a sound.

David has an incredible knack of taking my rather garbled description of something and making me exactly what I had in my head.  This little build-out hides where the underfloor heating pipes go into the wall and will be a useful shelf for keys etc.

The kitchen became a workshop while the weather was so vile!

One thing Mick wanted David to do was a piece of wood putting into the top of the dormers – there was a thin piece sticking down between the plasterboard, which I’d tried painting, and it just looked awful.  This is much neater and will be painted white.

It’s amazing how much more finished the house looks with all the skirting boards and door surrounds in place.  We had a big tidy-up downstairs this morning.

Also done by David but not photographed – a bead around the landing ceiling and the loft hatch, a thin piece of wood planed down and slipped in behind the bannisters to hide the underfloor heating insulation, and the top three stairs shimmed so that there isn’t quite so much of a difference with the top step, again because of the underfloor heating insulation.

We took a deep breath and ordered the furniture yesterday.  The shopping list consisted of:

  • 2 wardrobes
  • 5 bedside tables
  • 1 3-drawer chest
  • 2 2-over-3-drawer chest
  • 1 floor-standing cheval mirror
  • 2 small wall mirrors
  • 3 3ft beds
  • 1 5ft bed
  • 3 3ft pocket sprung mattresses
  • 1 5ft pocket sprung mattress
  • 2 upholstered dining chairs (these are going in the dormer windows in the two larger bedrooms)
  • 1 corner TV unit
  • 1 lamp table
  • 1 extending kitchen table
  • 5 cross-backed dining chairs with padded seats

All of the furniture is solid wood and I had a feeling that I was probably going to have to shut my eyes when I handed my card over, but the total, after a very generous £297 discount, came to £5,200, so thank you Riverside Interiors!  We also spent £3,050 with them on the two leather sofas and a friend of Mick’s was selling a coffee table in the same range of furniture we’ve picked for £100, so that makes our total furniture spend to date £8,350.  Looking at our original budget, we’re £300 over on the wooden furniture and £1,950 over on the sofas, but we’d originally budgeted for fabric, not leather, before we were advised by the agency that leather would be better if we were accepting dogs.

We had a visit today from Alex, who’d come over to have a look at the area in front of the house and the garden so he could quote for sorting it out.  We need the whole area in front of the house scraping back, a weedproof membrane laying and then covering in gravel, bar a long strip about a metre wide to the right of the gate, which will stay as grass.  At the back, we’re having a gravel path put in along the back of the house and then the rest of the garden will have the top layer scraped off.  As we know from our own house, the problem with making a garden out of a field is that it’s always trying to turn itself back into a field.  In theory, if we scrape back deep enough, we should hoick out all the docks, thistles and other unwanted field pests.  Unfortunately we’ll have to fork out for some turf rather than waiting for grass seed to take, otherwise the photos are going to look a bit weird when it’s advertised, but at least it’s the right time of year for laying it.

Lots for me to do next week, and I have a list that would probably choke all three of my horses, but tomorrow’s first job is to try and give my sheep a contagious disease!  About a third of them have come down with something called pinkeye, a mild conjunctivitis, and I’ve been advised that it’s best to try and get them all to develop it and get it out of the way, as it normally clears up by itself in 6-10 days and after having it they build up an immunity to it.  So I shall be down the road in the morning to fetch the feed troughs and then holding the sheep equivalent of a chicken pox party!

Kitchen or bust!

Great news – we didn’t just have David for today, we’ve got him for THREE WHOLE WEEKS (excluding this Friday when he has to go and do something else) and that hasn’t involved either shackling him to the old tying-up rings in the cow byre or bribery with baking!  The bad news is that come the 24th, he will be tied up on a new-build house for at least 6 weeks, so we’ve agreed that we’re all going hell for leather to get the floor down, the kitchen in, the window and door surrounds done, the dado rail installed round the top of the panelling upstairs, the window seats topped off, the fireplace surrounds done and the landing cupboards built.  He’s kindly said he’s happy to come over on a Saturday when he’s working on the new-build if we need him, but I’m hoping that three weeks will be enough to get us mostly sorted.

So July is definitely going to be a very, very spendy month.  David went into Thurso with a big shopping list of wood, so I have to go into Rembrand and pay for that on Wednesday, and this evening I’ve been researching kitchen appliances.  Looking at my rather neglected original budget, I had in £2,000 for all appliances, and I am very proud to say that I’ve come in at £2008.96 including free delivery to the Highlands.  That’s an oven, hob, extractor fan, dishwasher, washer-dryer and fridge freezer, all of them given favourable Which? reviews.  I used Currys PC World via Quidco* (2% cashback!) and they had some on-site discount codes as well, which took £160 off the total.  Very pleasantly surprised that they offered free delivery to my postcode, which generally gets lumped in with Orkney as it starts with KW (Kirkwall) even though it’s on the mainland.

Everything should be turning up on Tuesday 11th.  The plan is that this week David works on the upstairs rooms while Mick and I get downstairs prepped and painted.  Next week David will move downstairs, making sure the floor is laid in the kitchen by the end of the week.  The third week we’ll try and get Dougie in on the Monday for the joint visit and that will be kitchen installation week.  Wish us luck – we’re going to need it!!

Not much to report

Progress has been slow over the last fortnight.  David hasn’t been able to get to us for the past couple of weeks, but hopefully will manage a couple of days next week, as Dougie now has a reel of shotgun cable, ordered for him by Colin Chessor (who’ll be doing the satellite dish installation in due course) and is going to be running it into the living room and bedrooms next week.

Mick has spent a day down there today and we now have an insulated living room and the living room ceiling is plasterboarded.  By the time I went down to feed the sheep (who moved back to the fields around the house yesterday) it was too dark for photos.

On the finance and admin side, I got round to catching up on entering all my invoices and spends into my spreadsheet – we are now £35,000 into the budget *gulp*.  What I’m pleased about is that the majority of that money, all bar a couple of thousand, has been spent with local companies and tradespeople.  I do try to spend within the local economy where I can.  I’ve also ordered the correct Ordnance Survey map extract needed for the decrofting application, which arrived on Friday and is sitting in a tube on my desk ready for me to break out the colour pencils.  Since it cost me £19, I think the first thing to do is ask Mick to make several copies of it for me to practice on!  (My scanner doesn’t do A3).  Given I was sorting sheep out on the area in front of the house yesterday (we managed to pick up a few extras coming down the village!), I’m only going to apply to decroft the bit of ground the house sits on and a tiny bit behind it for a small garden – as long as I draw the map accurately, it should go through with no problems, as I’m not applying to decroft any areas that would restrict access to the rest of the croft.

Every little helps

I really need to sit down and go through the enormous stack of invoices that’s piling up under my desk, because I suspect I’ve gone very off-budget.  However, I’ve managed to bag another bargain this evening – B&Q had an offer on Sandtex masonry paint, 2 for £40 on all the 5 litre cans (usually £29 each), meaning I can have the colour I want for a little less than the colours that come in the bigger 10l tins (£44 each was the cheapest I could find them).

The paint splurge was prompted by Magnus sending me an email with an estimate of £800 for his labour costs, which he reckons will be 5-6 days and includes completely power-washing the house, but I need to buy the paint and he reckoned 100 litres would be a good starting point.  20 cans in the basket, £400 down from £580, free delivery to the Highlands and, as long as it tracks properly, 3% cashback via Quidco*

Where did the weekend go?

It seems it was Friday only about two seconds ago!  This is where the roofing team got to on Friday afternoon:

156 armadale - roof - 5

You can’t see it very well on the picture (click on it to enlarge), but there are four scalloped diamonds on the roof, spaced in between the windows.  Pete suggested that we do a line of scallops connecting them as well, to echo the one at the ridge line.  I was expecting the diamonds to be three slates wide, as per my original drawing – if you want a laugh…:

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they’ve actually gone for four and we may have overcooked it slightly, but I think it only looks a bit overdone at the moment because the rest of the outside isn’t finished.  Once the house is painted a warm white with a dark green front door, a couple of dark green planters with colourful flowers either side, a new fence and new gate, it might well be just right.

Of course, the fact that the front is nearly finished means that I’m going to have to write another big cheque soon, as the second of the three payments is due on completion of slating.  My credit card bill for the insulation and flooring arrived last week (1% cashback on that card!) and when I logged in to pay it, I was slightly alarmed to see that I had no money transfer or balance transfer offers available – there’s been one on that card every month for at least the last three years.  I still have one available on my other card from the same provider, which I will take up next week, but this card has a £12,000 limit and not being able to access that is going to leave quite a big hole in the budget.

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Hey big spender

I had to write the first big cheque last week (well, the first one since the one I wrote for buying the place, which was a whopper!), so I thought it was probably time to put my cards on the table and share my budget.

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There are really two parts to the budget: what’s needed to get it to the point where it could be sold or rented and what’s needed to furnish it to turn it into a holiday let.  Here are our figures.

Item Estimate
Roof & stonework £16,000.00
Electrics £4,655.00
Heating & burner install £7,000.00
Joinery £5,000.00
Kitchen units £3,000.00
Downstairs flooring £1,600.00
Carpets £750.00
Plasterboard & insulation £2,000.00
Skirting boards £200.00
Kitchen appliances £2,000.00
Switches, sockets, light fittings £500.00
Interior paint £500.00
Exterior paint £1,000.00
Shower tray & screen £700.00
Shower £400.00
Woodburner & kit £1,500.00
Windows and door £5,000.00
Door stripping £400.00
Miscellaneous tools £2,500.00
Bathroom tiles £250.00
Garden/fencing £2,000.00
Interest, council tax, electricity £3,500.00

Total: £60,455 *gulp* And we’re actually already £2,720 over the roof budget because of the extra work to the stone. On the plus side, the house and surrounding fields were valued at £77,500 on the home report (the rest of the value being assigned to the other croft) and should be worth in the region of £150-160,000 once we’re done, so we’re still just about in profit.

On the furnishings side..

Beds x 4 £750.00
Mattresses x 4 £1,300.00
Sofas x 2 £1,100.00
Kitchen table & chairs £800.00
Coffee table £200.00
TV unit £200.00
TV £300.00
Wardrobes x 3 £750.00
Drawers x 2 £500.00
Bedside tables x 4 £500.00
Pots, pans & crockery etc £600.00
Cushions, pictures etc. £500.00

Total:  £7,500.  I’ve priced up for mostly new, but am hoping I can save some money by buying good-quality second hand – browsing the local Facebook for sale group, I’ve already seen a really nice oak single bed frame that would be perfect for the small bedroom for £45.  A friend of mine recently furnished an entire rental property from the weekly furniture auctions at Dingwall and has a teenage niece who’s got the long summer holidays coming up who is very, very talented at smartening up bargain buys, so I’m hoping she might be employable for a few days!  The one thing I refuse to buy second-hand are mattresses.

We’ve also agreed a £5,000 contingency, bringing the overall grand total potential spend to an absolutely eye-watering £72,955.  We have enough cash, from savings and 0% offers, to get us to the house being more or less finished, but not the garden – so I need to crack on with the decrofting application for the house site to make sure that as soon as there’s a working kitchen and bathroom in place, I can get on with a mortgage application to release money to pay back the 0% deals as they expire and put the final touches to it so it can start earning its keep.

Budget Day

Not just for Mr Osborne, but I thought I’d add up how much I’ve spent to get here so far, as the solicitor’s bill arrived this afternoon.

The only two expenses I’ve had (not counting the running costs for my sheep – I’m keeping my crofting budget separate) are the interest on the money I’ve borrowed from my family and the legal fees, so the accounts so far look like this:

Difference between money borrowed and purchase price – £70.51
10th Nov – Interest – £96.68
10th Dec – Interest – £276.88
11th Jan – Interest – £276.88
10th Feb – Interest – £276.88
10th Mar – Interest – £276.88
16th Mar – Solicitor’s bill – £766.00
Total:  £2,040.71

So it’s cost me a little over £2,000 just to get the keys.  In fairness, that’s not bad – I had to sit down when I opened the solicitor’s letter, as I was expecting that to be four figures and possibly starting with a 2!  I shall drop in and pay it tomorrow and leave a large Easter egg for Jane, my solicitor 🙂

I had a call back from Dougie the electrician this afternoon – he was up the road in Melvich, could he come and have a look?  Sure.  The good news is that he’s agreed to quote for it, so I need to think about what I want in each room in terms of lighting and sockets (I don’t need to finalise positions just yet), think about where I want the TV and the phone, as he’s going to hide all the cabling currently tacked to the front of the house for those, and decide whether I want the power to the byre to be on a separate meter to the rest of the house.  He’s also going to move the position of and seriously upgrade the heating controls (it’s a cheap clockwork timer and the noise is really annoying) and move the meter and fusebox etc. – he’d seen that the main power cable into the house is chased into the harling down the outside wall and then goes through a wooden panel above the front door, which isn’t ideal, so since we’re getting the door replaced and we’ll have someone patching the non-harled bits that will be revealed when Pete takes the fascia boards off, it’s going to go through the wall at the height of the connection and all be hidden in a little cupboard on the landing.  Mick has suggested that we ask him to also quote for putting in outside lights, particularly one to illuminate the fanks (sheep handling system), and also for wiring in a back-up generator so that if we do have guests in and there’s a power cut, it’ll cut in and take over.  We actually have a generator here, but it’s not wired in, so it can go down the road.

Another two hours stripping out panelling and bedroom one is very nearly ready for work to start.  The priority over the next few days is to get the surfaces with the Veluxes/proposed Veluxes bare so that if Pete wants to start cutting holes in the roof next week it’s all ready to go.  I uncovered a MAHOOSIVE spider which I thought was dead, but turned out not to be.  Mick really Does Not Do spiders, so I had to dispose of it out of the bedroom window.